Oak Trail

The Walk

Turn right out of the courtyard and let the grade do the work — the trail gives up its elevation steadily, switchbacking east toward the Wildwood. Early on, watch the left side for a Douglas-fir carrying a long lightning scar down its trunk, a seam torn by a strike and healed over. It’s the kind of thing you walk right past unless someone points it out, which is exactly why it’s worth pointing out.

Then the oaks take over. The collection gathers here on purpose: a shingle oak, a grove of black oaks, and swamp white oaks noted lower down as the trail loses elevation. Partway through, the Beech Trail crosses at a four-way junction and drops off toward Upper Cascade Drive — a connection to file away, not a detour to take today. Keep with the descent and it hands you down to the Wildwood at the base.

Forest Skill — an oak island in a conifer forest Forest Park proper is Douglas-fir, hemlock, and bigleaf maple; native oaks barely get a foothold. Hoyt’s deciduous side gathers them on purpose, so a few hundred feet of trail becomes a lesson in how different one genus can look. The shingle oak throws you first — its leaves are smooth, unlobed blades, nothing like the deep-cut lobes of the black oaks a little farther down. Slow down and you can read a whole continent of oak between the courtyard and the Wildwood.

Before you go

Mind the direction of travel. From the Visitor Center it runs mostly downhill, which is lovely on the way out and honest work on the way back — if you come down Oak Trail and change your mind, the return is a steady climb up to the courtyard. Most people don’t turn around at all: they carry on from the Wildwood toward the gardens and loop back another way.

It’s foot traffic only, muddy in spots after fall rains, and best of all in autumn, when the oaks color up and let a little more light down through the canopy before winter strips them bare.

Really, though, think of it less as a walk than as a threshold. It’s the arboretum’s door swinging east — the few quiet minutes between the labeled trees and the gardens beyond.